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FBI Raids Homes in Insurrection Investigation; South Carolina Mom Leaves QAnon Behind; Senate Power Sharing Agreement; GOP to Restricting Voter Access. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired February 03, 2021 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[09:31:20]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Just about an hour from now congressional lawmakers will pay respects to officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick took an oath to uphold the Constitution. He lost his life doing just that.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: That's exactly right. A big honor. Well- deserved for him today. He died as a result of the January 6th mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is after a rioter hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Sicknick joined the Capitol Police in 2008. He was well-known to lawmakers, staff and others who passed through the building's doors every day.

We're going to bring you, next hour, to this special ceremony honoring his life. You'll see it all live right here.

SCIUTTO: Well, federal authorities recently raided the homes of two men who sponsored an intense rally near the U.S. Capitol the day before that January 6th attack.

HARLOW: And these are the first known search warrants involving people who organized and spoke at rallies that preceded the insurrection.

Our security correspondent Josh Campbell joins us from Washington this morning.

This is interesting because it is a turn. It's not just looking at the people who actually broke into the Capitol, it's looking at people who held events preceding it.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And It appears federal authorities are opening the aperture of their investigation. This new reporting from our colleagues Paul Murphy and Marshall Cohen indicated that the FBI recently raided properties associated with two men who organized this invective-laced rally that took place one day before the Capitol attack here in Washington. Now an FBI spokesperson says that federal agents executed search

warrants at two properties in Orange County, California. Public records indicate that those properties belong to these two men, Russell Taylor and Alan Hostetter. These are well-known conspiracy theorists, (INAUDIBLE) of the QAnon movement, the deep state myth and so on.

Now, footage from the rally that took place on the day before the attack shows them just spewing this militant, violent rhetoric, talking about the members there should prepare for war tomorrow against members of Congress. Now, it's worth pointing out that neither men has been charged with any crimes at this point, but it is worth noting that this appears to be the first known federal action against people linked to rallies associated with that Capitol attack.

SCIUTTO: You've said, Josh, previously on this broadcast, that this is the biggest FBI investigation since 9/11 in terms of scope across the country.

What do these arrests related to a rally the day before January 6th tell us about where the FBI is taking this investigation? How broadly and what its targets are here?

CAMPBELL: Yes, we know this is a resource intensive investigation. Our sources telling us that they haven't seen an investigation like this inside the FBI since 9/11. You have all 56 field offices involved and obviously members -- the people that took part in this insurrection fled afterwards. They're now being rounded up by federal authorities.

But what I think this tells people out there, especially those who may have been associated with this attack, is that federal investigators are not just looking for people who were inside the Capitol. It appears as though they are now broadening this investigation to possibly look at those who may have incited violence.

And just this very fact, you just look at the calendar, this is -- the men who had their homes raided, they weren't part of -- that we know of, you know, the attack inside the Capitol. Their rally occurred the day before. But, of course, investigators looking at whether that gathering may have incited the violence that occurred. So, again, authorities opening that aperture. It appears that there may be more people in their crosshairs than just the attackers at the Capitol.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

HARLOW: That's really interesting and important.

Josh Campbell, thank you for the great reporting, as always.

Sources tell CNN that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is going to try to cut a deal with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer today to head off a floor vote on the fate of Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[09:35:05]

Democrats and several Republicans are calling for the QAnon conspiracy theorist to be stripped of her committee assignments.

SCIUTTO: Well, she has spouted many debunked conspiracy theories from QAnon, a group that gathered millions of followers through social media.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan spoke to a South Carolina mother who was a follower but now calls it a dangerous political movement. A great view from the inside.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ASHLEY VANDERBILT, FORMER QANON BELIEVER: When President Biden was sworn in --

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. --

VANDERBILT: I was just crying. I mean, I couldn't stop. Like that ugly cry that you do. It just kept going. And I was like, oh, my gosh, like I'm seeing the funeral of our country.

And, instantly, I went into panic mode. I had to call my mom. And I just told her, I was like, we're all going to die. We're going to be owned by China. And I was like, I might have to pull my daughter out of school because they're going to take her. I was scared to death.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN REPORTER (voice over): Ashley Vanderbilt, a South Carolina mom who says she lost her job early in the pandemic fell deep down the QAnon conspiracy theory rabbit hole before November's election.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): How did you get into this world and go down this rabbit hole?

VANDERBILT: Well, I started seeing TikToks. And I didn't know that it was conspiracy things. I just thought it was -- they were telling me something that nobody else knew.

So then I would reach out to different friends of mine that were bigger Trump supporters. I would say, you know, I saw this on TikTok, what do you think? And they'd start sending me YouTube videos. They would start sending me different FaceBook Live videos. And one thing led to another. I just went down this rabbit hole learning all this stuff.

But, I mean, what have we heard the last four or five years. Don't watch the news. Fake news. Fake news.

I don't watch the news. I don't read newspapers. Look, I don't do anything. I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it. I grew up being told we were Republican, so I've always been that straight red ticket.

O'SULLIVAN: How do you think that videos like this started showing up in your feed?

VANDERBILT: Well, originally, I was just following like entertainment stuff. But sometime when maybe people started like campaigning, I started liking a lot of Trump posts and things that were anti-Biden. And the algorithm must have just brought that kind of stuff to me.

O'SULLIVAN: Right before the inauguration, you didn't believe Biden was really going to get sworn in.

VANDERBILT: No, I expected a blackout. I expected the TV to go black and nothing to work and so we wouldn't see anything. The assumption of what would happen would be that most of the Democratic leaders there, quite a few of the Republican leaders, all the Hollywood elite that had attended, they'd all be arrested.

The military is going to haul them off. They said that Trump opened back up Guantanamo Bay and then the military would run the country, put us in martial law because the left had come too unhinged and they'd be a danger to us and then Trump would come back when the government was rebuilt.

I know it sounds crazy.

O'SULLIVAN: But you believed this?

VANDERBILT: I did.

O'SULLIVAN: And then Biden got sworn in.

VANDERBILT: Uh-huh.

O'SULLIVAN: How did you feel?

VANDERBILT: I was devastated.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): The belief among QAnon supporters that Biden would not be inaugurated was wrong. Ashley Vanderbilt realized she had bought into a conspiracy theory.

VANDERBILT: Well, I was wrong.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): How do you feel now knowing that you believed all this stuff?

VANDERBILT: It's weird. I think I spent a lot of time this year isolated from everybody. You know, I've just been home a lot. I lost my job last April in 2020, and I was super depressed. And I think, in a way, I probably lost touch with a little bit of reality in that -- almost like common sense. And so I'm not so much embarrassed for what I believed, but, I mean, I feel foolish.

I was stressed out all the time. So my home life like with my four- year-old, I feel like I definitely had a lot less patience with her. There would just be times where I'd just snap, I would just get so upset with her. So I -- I've had to apologized to her a lot for, like, I'm sorry for

just even getting hateful toward you. Like, I -- it is not you. It's me. I've got my own stuff going on.

O'SULLIVAN: I mean you must be happy that, for your daughter's sake, that you've been able to get out of this?

VANDERBILT: Yes. She needs her mom. And I wasn't 100 percent there like I should have been.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): A spokesperson for TikTok said the company is committed to countering misinformation and content promoting QAnon is not allowed on its platform. After finding QAnon through TikTok, Ashley said the only thing that might have pulled her out of it before the inauguration was if Trump spoke out against it.

VANDERBILT: I was the biggest Trump supporter there was. If he were to have said something, and if he were to just say, Q is illegitimate, nothing's real in there, I think some people would leave. Maybe not all, the people that are way too far into it, but I think it would help a lot of --

SULLIVAN (on camera): It would have helped you?

VANDERBILT: Uh-huh. I thought the world of him. So if he would have said, that's not real, I'm not coming back, it is over, I would have believed him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: I give her, Donie, so much credit for speaking so candidly to you about this and hopefully it helps others. But she made really clear, former President Trump could have changed all of this.

O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. I mean, you know, she said he -- she idolized him. She also told me that, you know, she's a religious person. She's a Christian and she said she was worried at points that she was putting Trump above God.

[09:40:05]

He was an idol. And, obviously, we have seen Trump not condemn this movement, but instead praise their supporters and retweet prominent QAnon accounts.

SCIUTTO: Listen, maybe it shows a path to de-radicalizing, right, which is -- was a concern with international terrorism. We'll see if there's a path forward with domestic terrorism.

Donie O'Sullivan, thanks very much.

Well, next, Republicans going through extraordinary measures to restrict voting in several states. It's not by accident. Right now more than 100 bills are moving through state legislatures. The motivation behind it, ahead.

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[09:45:02]

HARLOW: Well, this just in to CNN.

We have breaking news on what looks to be an imminent power-sharing agreement between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, which has been long awaited, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes, we were just discussing, Lauren Fox, this is her reporting, has more on this.

Do we know how they settled this -- these disputes?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they've essentially been haggling over this for weeks. There were basically just a few sticking points left.

But as we have reported, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, according to Democrats, was dragging his feet in these negotiations. And they finally have reached some kind of an agreement in principle. We expect it to be announced very shortly. But I will tell you, this is something that had started to stand in the way of President Joe Biden's agenda and his ability to get his cabinet nominees confirmed.

As we talked about a little bit earlier, remember, Lindsey Graham was the de facto chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was arguing that he didn't want to hold a confirmation hearing for Biden's attorney general nominee, Merrick Garland, because he said he wanted it to be a two-day process because they were starting the impeachment trial on Tuesday. He said it wasn't enough time. This agreement would unlock the ability for Democrats to finally chair the committees.

Now the question is how quickly can they move this agreement on the floor? It does require some consent from all 100 senators to fast track this once they actually get ready to hold the vote. It's just 60 votes required.

But essentially the question becomes, how many members would stand in the way of moving this quickly? We just don't have that answer yet. But an agreement in principle has been reached and we expect an announcement shortly.

Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Lauren Fox, thanks for the reporting. We know you'll have more. Please stay with us and we'll be back after a short break.

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[09:51:10]

HARLOW: Welcome back.

Well, a pro-Trump lawyer who pushed baseless voter fraud conspiracies in court is now the subject of a voter fraud investigation in the state of Georgia. The secretary of state's office there is now investigating whether the attorney, Lin Wood, was a legal resident when he voted there in November.

SCIUTTO: False fraud claims are now fueling GOP efforts to roll back, to restrict voter access. More than 100 bills that would restrict voting are moving through several state legislatures.

Joining us now to discuss, John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst.

You know, John, this is a huge story. State legislatures in 28 states pursuing 106 bills that would restrict voting access. And I found the comments of a Republican from Georgia kind of speaking with her outside voice here that gets at the motivation. She said they don't have to change all of them, the election laws, but they've got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.

Does that reveal the motivation behind this, that this is about more voting equals more Democrats voting?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: A hundred percent. That was the GOP chair of Gwinnett County in Georgia and she said the quiet part out loud, that they needed to put these changes so that Republicans would have a shot at winning. And it's about trying to raise the bar for participation and make it more difficult.

And specifically it's about things like requiring automatic absentee ballots to be cast for people who are over 75, or just really make it more difficult for more people to participate. And that's the constant pattern we are seeing across these various states. And in some cases Republicans trying to overturn rules that they passed in earlier iterations and it's just impossible to look at this honestly and not see an attempt to sort of rig the system.

And as you pointed out, it's also conspiracy theory bootstrapping, which is to say they're ripping off the president's repeated false claims of voter fraud and saying that confusion requires constricting the number of people voting.

HARLOW: And, John, not to mention totally banning ballot drop off boxes across the state of Georgia. Another way to make it easier for people to exercise their constitutional right and to have their voice heard.

This would be, if they're successful, rolling back almost all of what Stacey Abrams was able to do over the last few years.

AVLON: Yes.

HARLOW: Do you think they will be successful in doing that? I mean who's going to decide here?

AVLON: Well, look, I mean that's -- this is a case of a Republican legislature trying to muscle. The fact that it's over -- trying to overturn or undo what Stacey Abrams did very successfully, to flip -- help flip the state in terms of the Senate vote, says all you need to know.

But I think ultimately this is about a discomfort with a full participation in democracy. And the voters ultimately get their call. But the fact that so many state legislatures are controlled by Republicans who were trying to sort of put their thumb on the scale to retain power speaks to the deeper problem in our politics right now. It's a lot of false claims about voter fraud to justify moves that are basically just naked power grabs trying to restrict the number of people who vote and participate.

SCIUTTO: Listen, even conservatives have called this out. George Will has called it straight-up voter suppression. I wonder, state legislatures have enormous power to set these rules. Can they be challenged in court by Democrats?

AVLON: They can be challenged in court. You know, there's a long history of voter suppression being pushed through, you know, in the south in particular. And on the countervailing force also is the Democrats trying to push forward their For the People Act, which is, you know, HR-1 in the House and the Senate to try to enshrine a lot of voting rights that have been eroded over the years, including automatic voter registration.

So these two state level versus federal level efforts are on a collision course. But it speaks to the larger thing we need to deal with as a country, which is to strengthen our democracy, to strengthen the guardrails because gosh knows we've seen the evidence of why it's needed in the recent years.

[09:55:02]

HARLOW: We know, John Avlon, you'll be keeping them honest all the way along with your "Reality Checks" wherever this goes, but it's important people know it's happening and it's happening right now.

AVLON: Absolutely.

HARLOW: Thank you, John.

AVLON: Thanks, guys.

SCIUTTO: Next hour, an officer killed in the U.S. Capitol attack will be honored inside that very building there, the very building he took an oath to protect, died protecting. We're going to take you there live for a solemn ceremony, next.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

HARLOW: It is the top of the hour. We've got a big, significant hour ahead. We're glad you're with us. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

We are following breaking news this hour from the Senate where the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer just made an announcement that a power-sharing agreement between the two parties has been reached.

[10:00:04]

Here's what he said just moments ago.